Vamanan
Through this colourful journalistic persona and the crisp writing in ‘Kalkandu’, the magazine he edited from its founding in 1948, he held the attention of a vast readership for more than a quarter of a century, until his premature death in 1977. Because of a new bus stop outside the gate of the office which was causing a lot of inconvenience to his employees, Tamilvanan is said to have driven straight to the police commissioner’s office and instantly had it shifted, once when SAP was downcast.
It is said that SAP would marvel at Tamilvanan’s animated conversation and dynamism. There was also an incident in Hong Kong in which actor M G Ramachandran is said to have attempted to assault Tamilvanan in Hong Kong when the latter called on him at his hotel. A real-life incident illustrates the point: two muggers who had waylaid him fled in the mistaken belief that he was a policeman in plain clothes, after being rattled by his loud, uproarious laughter. He then proceeded to Chennai, where, under the guidance of the seminal Tamil publisher and editor ‘Sakti’ Vai Govindan, he edited ‘Anil’, a children’s magazine. In the city, he teamed up with schoolmate Tirunavukkarasu, who later helmed the prestigious ‘Vanathi Pathippagam’, and together they published books for children under the ‘Jil Jil’ imprint. The reprints of the cheaply priced Tamilvanan-authored titles impressed printer P V Parthasarathy so much that he recommended him to his partner, S A P Annamalai, editor of Kumudam. That recommendation led to the birth of ‘Kalkandu’ as a sister publication of ‘Kumudam’. the latter would call upon SAP in the office only rarely and speak to him for only a few minutes While SAP and Tamilvanan shared mutual respect. Tamilvanan’s fearlessness was not confined to his travels. He had the reputation of being as good a speaker as a writer, but at a felicitation function at Abbotsbury in Chennai for state assembly speaker C P Adithanar, his extravagant remarks were construed by ruling party volunteers as an insult to DMK founder Anna. He was belaboured by them and his car vandalised. MGR was apparently angry about more than one thing Tamilvanan had written about him: That he was an ageing hero and that he was not a good politician. Tamilvanan had even written a book on how to live to a hundred. Sadly, he lived to just cross fifty. Yet, in an extraordinary continuation of his legacy, his elder son Lena Tamilvanan carried on his father’s work as editor of Kalkandu for more than four decades after his untimely death, while his younger son Ravi Tamilvanan has expanded the publishing house.